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Why Senior Doctors and Healthcare Administrators Should Follow Popular Doctor Meme Pages
If administrators think meme pages are purely a bunch of silly posts by “shit-stirrers”, think again.
2022 began on a rather hopeful note for Singaporean doctors, as the national broadsheet finally picked up the issue of junior doctors’ welfare. The Straits Times published articles such as “It may be time to review junior doctors 30-hour shifts” and “My brain kind of stops functioning: Long working hours leaving young doctors exhausted” in February 2022. While these same issues were highlighted much earlier by smaller independent news companies such as Rice Media and The HomeGround Asia, they did not gain as much traction due to the smaller audience numbers.
Unsurprisingly, the articles by the Straits Times which highlighted the struggles of junior doctors generated a lot of discussion in both the public and medical circles. While the public’s response was largely sympathetic, the medical circles were more divided in response. In fact, several doctors who left for the private health sector wrote to the Straits Times Forum, articulating their views on the matter. Some highlighted that members of the public were overzealous in insinuating that it was due to the medical community being “resistant to change”, others continued to reinforce the narrative that “night duty (is) an invaluable part of house officers’ medical training” and even hinted that such outcries on the plight that junior doctors faced were puzzling. Dr. Yik Keng Yeong’s letter, dated 11 February 2022, in particular, seemed to bemoan this as a non-issue. He wrote to the Straits Times Forum, expressing his surprise:
In some closed medical Facebook groups, these sentiments were shared by some senior doctors and healthcare administrators, highlighting that their past experiences were worse, and in less kind words, admonishing junior doctors who were partaking in such discourses as “shit-stirrers”. More explicitly, senior doctors in administrative positions began calling out popular doctor meme…
